Carving a niche

Night of a Thousand Jacks has quickly become a popular and productive early Halloween event at FairOaks Mall. The annual fundraiser, which benefits Advocates for Children, a nonprofit agency that provides help for children who have been victims of neglect or abuse, used to be an outdoor event downtown. However, unfavorable weather prompted the move indoors last year — and the change has turned out well.

This year’s event drew an estimated 3,500 people and raised nearly $18,000 on Oct. 29, organizers said. That’s a solid encore to the nearly $22,000 raised last year.

The event featured 16 patches of carved pumpkins, and attendees could vote for their favorite by donating $1. The event also included a costume contest, games and crafts.

The efforts of those who organized the event and those who participated and donated are appreciated.

Cautionary tale

As Thanksgiving approaches, consumers will ramp up their Christmas shopping. When they are out at stores making their purchases, they need to remember to be careful about what items they leave in their vehicles.

Consider the hard-luck story of an Indiana family that lost irreplaceable family photos when the laptop computer in which the photos were stored was stolen from their locked-vehicle near a shopping center. So was $200 in recently purchased merchandise from nearby shops.

The incident serves as a reminder that predators are out there and consumers should never assume that items will be safe even when stored in a vehicle right after shopping.

Tasty offering

Festivals and special events are things that add to the quality of life of a community, as they celebrate or highlight certain aspects of it. Taste of Columbus, sponsored for the second year by the Columbus Area Chamber of Commerce on Oct. 27 at The Commons, certainly accomplishes that.

About 400 people attended and sampled main courses, desserts and drinks from more than 25 local food vendors. This enjoyable community event brought people together in a relaxed social setting, and in some cases broadened their knowledge of the community by interacting with businesses they previously had not.

Kudos to those who organized, participated in and attended the event for making it a worthwhile experience.

Diesel engines made Columbus a Fortune 500 city. World-famous architecture put Columbus on the map.

Give J. Irwin Miller credit for both achievements.

As chairman and CEO of Cummins Inc. from 1934 to 1977, Miller turned an unprofitable Indiana-based business into a global leader in diesel engines and related technology that today reports net income of $1.65 billion a year.

As a philanthropist and man of faith, Miller took seriously his company’s obligation to improve its community. He founded the Cummins Foundation in 1954 to support worthwhile projects in his city and later to promote good causes in places where Cummins did business.

His most visible legacy was the architecture program, a public-private partnership through which the foundation funded design fees of public buildings – if they were designed by leading architects.

Thanks to that investment, Columbus — population 45,000 — has 70 buildings and artworks by such masters as I.M. Pei, Eliel Saarinen, Eero Saarinen, Richard Meier, Harry Weese, Dale Chihuly and Henry Moore.

“This is a pilgrimage place,” said architect Will Bruder of Phoenix, who visited Columbus in 2012 for an American Institute of Architects conference on design excellence.

Miller’s idea grew out of a building project that took place at his own church in the early 1940s. First Christian Church had outgrown its space and wanted a new structure that was not traditional. The building committee approached Eliel Saarinen, a native of Finland known for his work at the Cranbrook Institute of Architecture and Design in Michigan.

Initially, Saarinen turned down the offer but a personal appeal by Miller persuaded him that the congregation was open to something radically different. Completed in 1942, it was the first contemporary building in Columbus and one of the first modern churches in the United States.

In the 1950s, Eliel Saarinen’s son, Eero, famous for the St. Louis Gateway Arch, designed three radically different structures for the Miller family: a vacation home in Canada, the Irwin Union Bank and Trust and the Miller residence. The latter was notable because of its collaboration between Saarinen and interior designer Alexander Girard and landscape architect Dan Kiley

The public architecture initiative was prompted by the post-World War II baby boom that necessitated new schools. Hoping to discourage bland institutional architecture that characterized typical school buildings, Miller proposed a novel relationship with the school board. His foundation would pay for the design of Schmitt Elementary if the school corporation would pay for construction. The results delighted everyone, and the program expanded to cover other public buildings, landscape and streetscape projects.

Even the county jail was built with livability and aesthetics in mind. Designed by Don Hisaka in 1990, it is made of brick and Indiana limestone – complementing the nearby courthouse — with a recreation area covered by a wire-mesh dome.

Seventy-five years after Miller lured the Saarinens to town, Columbus remains committed to his vision. The Mill Race Center, offering senior services, is a recent example. Completed in 2011, the curving brick design by William Rawn Associates of Boston takes advantage of natural lighting with views of an adjacent city park.

The Columbus Area Visitors Center offers a variety of tours of Columbus’ architectural landmarks, including the Miller home and gardens, which were donated to the Indianapolis Museum of Art by the family after Mr. and Mrs. Miller’s deaths.